Valve’s Steam Frame is excellent – but at over £1,000 is VR still too expensive?

The Steam Frame is certainly not a budget product.

But not everyone agrees with the suggestion that VR in general costs too much.

“The idea that it’s too expensive is one of the biggest misconceptions about VR,” UploadVR website editor David Heaney told me.

He pointed out while some headsets may be expensive, Meta’s Quest 3S budget model costs £320 but has been on sale for £250 several times.

“In context, a Nintendo Switch 2 is £420, an Xbox Series S is £430, and a PS5 is £470 – Quest 3S, which is primarily used for gaming, is cheaper than other games consoles,” he said.

He said the big barrier to more people getting into VR was simply that “we’re still in the early days”.

“You have to see VR in the same timeframe you’d see personal computers in the 1980s,” he said.

“Even if they had been cheap, which they weren’t, they weren’t yet good enough for mainstream adoption.

“VR is only just getting started, a tech in its 1980s PC era, not something anywhere near maturity.”